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Since the early stages of last year’s 13-3 season, media coverage of the 49ers has generally ranged from favorable to fawning. And there’s no end in sight.

With training camps underway, the 49ers are, for compelling reasons, a popular Super Bowl pick. After Sports Illustrated’s Peter King visited Santa Clara on Monday, the headline of his column today reads: “Led again by dominant defense, 49ers have Super look.” King writes that “Long-term this is the best I’ve felt about the 49ers since Steve Young walked off the field for the last time in 1999.”

Such talk is sweet for 49ers fans. And it’s battery acid for Jim Harbaugh, who subscribes to this pearl of wisdom handed down by one of his former college coaches: “When people start talking nice about you, kick them in the shins.”

Harbaugh relayed that nugget last year after he felt a line of media questioning had become too sugary. It was the day after the 49ers’ come-from-behind 24-23 win against the Eagles. The Niners, at 3-1, were a budding national story, the Harbaugh-works-his-magic stories were in their embryonic stages and the coach began taking his swings against Complacency.

“We just feel a more certain assurance of success when all that’s written is written against us,” Harbaugh said. “It’s when honeyed words of praise are flowered upon us that we begin to feel exposed before our enemies.”

Ten months and countless honeyed words of praise later, Harbaugh has been forced to assume an added title this season: Broadcaster of All Negative Things Written About My Super-Bowl-Contending Team In Order to Maintain An Us-Against-Them Mentality.

Yes, it’s a mouthful. And it’s not an easy job. But Harbaugh is up to the task.

On Sunday, he made an unscheduled visit to the media tent to broadcast that some “scribes, pundits and so-called experts” have labeled first-round pick A.J. Jenkins a “bust,” which is definitely not flowery praise.

On Monday, he told King that another 49ers wide receiver, Kyle Williams, had received harsh media treatment: Wrote King, via Twitter: “Harbaugh on Kyle Wms: ‘We will not allow the media to hang an albatross ard his neck. He’s on the inside of our team looking out.’”

The tone of the media coverage I’ve read about Williams in the aftermath of his two fumbles in the NFC Championship Game has been fair, professional and, often, sympathetic.

But that’s not the point, of course.

Harbaugh will take any slight – real or imagined – to use as fuel for himself and his players.

It’s actually a brilliant strategy: Come out swinging against your detractors and respond to pats on the back with kicks in the shins.